Despite the fact that winning our game in hand would elevate us to a play-off place in the League One table, there are few grounds for optimism for the remainder of the season.

Since Morais departed the field, we have played seven games in all competitions. The record reads: p7 W1, L 3, D 3; F 6 A 10. In none of those games have we scored more than once.

Where will the goals come from? Are we banking on Marriott continuing at his current thirty-goals-a-season clip? His ten L1 goals (achieved by mid-October) has already matched last season’s top-scorer Nichols’ total.
Edwards and Maddison have contributed two goals apiece in open play this season (Maddison also has two penalties). The manager seems disposed to re-deploy them from their most effective positions (receiving the ball to feet in relatively deep, wide positions), so that’s not an encouraging development. The rest of our midfield cohort of Doughty, Grant, Forrester, Chettle, Anderson, LDSL, Lloyd have no L1 goals between them this season. Doughty and Grant approach games as if trying to score an occasional goal has not been written into their contracts. LDSL has made sixty-two L1 appearances and scored in one of them. Whatever substitute the manager chooses to bring on, you can be virtually certain that it will not be a current L1 goal-scorer.

Four defenders have combined for a goal apiece, which seems a decent return from this area.

Unless/until reinforcements arrive in January, it seems obvious that Miller must be given extensive game time. He has no goals in seven appearances, but what’s the alternative? Tom Nichols and Luke James both scored on their debuts. Conor Washington took a long time to come to the boil. Ken Charlery looked nothing like a footballer in his first few games for us.

If goal-scoring weren’t enough of a problem, we’ve only kept three clean sheets while conceding twenty-one goals; the top six teams are conceding an average of thirteen. Their average goal difference is +10.3; ours is +4.

The Tranmere game gave an unpleasant insight into the vacuous void that is the manager’s tactical awareness. Play Miller against opponents from a level at which he was so prolific last season? No: give him four minutes at the end, just to show the level of your confidence in him. Play Lloyd instead of LDSL? No, because….because…. Every time I could bring myself to peer through my fingers on Saturday, I saw a team with five or six defenders, one striker isolated up front, with a few figures wandering around in the space in between. It defended corners with ten men in the box, and one just outside: quite a reasonable deployment for a team playing at the home of opponents a couple of leagues higher. The trouble is that that team was PUFC, not Tranmere.

Straws at which to ClutchSomebody might be able to fix Chris Forrester.
Ricky Miller might get started.
The intermittently upright Marcus Maddison might decide to go on the rampage.

Something over which to Gnaw your FingernailsThe sight of Jack Marriott limping off the field, clutching a hamstring (his own).

Half the team continue to be played out of position as we continue our sideways backwards boring style of football...All this with only one fit striker...wing backs that aren't wing backs...and a manager that continues to struggle tactically.